Opinion

SQUARELY

PEGGED

By Peggy McCracken

What you want to find

is one keystroke away

When I read last week's column, I realized I left something out about searching the Internet. I led you up to the point where you access a file, but failed to tell you that most browsers have a "find" option on the tool bar that lets you search just in that file for your topic.

Testing this out on Netscape, I first accessed a search engine to see if our website ever made it onto their indexes. The very first one I tried was "Excite," and the Pecos Enterprise was the second listing. I clicked on that and came up with my latest "advertising" page.

Farther down the page, I found a link to our index page, which has a search engine on it. I entered a name, which took me to an Archives file. Then I clicked on "find," and entered the name again. The first occurrence appeared immediately, highlighted in blue. A dialogue box asked if I wanted to continue or cancel. I clicked on "Next" and learned there were no more occurrences of that name in that particular file.

Because we have a search engine on the Archives Menu page, you could easily find any subject in any local or area story that we published June 28 or later.

I am wondering how much of a market there may be for back issues of the Enterprise. We could convert our microfilmed pages to digital files and make all of them available, way back to the turn of the century. Wouldn't it be fun to look up all the stories about yourself? Or your enemy?

Quite frequently I get a call from someone wanting copies of stories we have run in the past. Most are lawyers or insurance investigators working on a court case, and they need to know everything they can learn about a particular accident or criminal violation. Because I keep much of my court stories stored on disk, often I can locate them in a hurry. But when I don't have them, we have to turn through the daily papers looking for the story they want. And if it's been more than two years, we don't even have copies of the paper - just microfilm. And no microfilm printer.

In such cases, I long to have everything on computer with a fast search engine to sniff out exactly the stories they want.

Computers can store more information than you would ever use. But the beauty of it is, it doesn't take up much space. And if you do need it, the information is just a few keystrokes away.

OTHER VIEWS

Successful Brady bill

should be expanded

There is no simple cure for the epidemic of gun violence in America. But a mandatory waiting period for handgun purchases - allowing time for a background check on prospective buyers - is proving to be a very useful tool in keeping firearms out of the wrong hands.

In the last two years, since enactment of the Brady law requiring background checks in all states, 102,822 criminals and other banned purchasers were prevented from buying handguns, according to a study by the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence.*The study's release was timed to coincide with an appearance by Sarah Brady, the center's chairwoman, at the Democratic National Convention. Her husband, former White House Press Secretary James Brady, was permanently disabled by gunman John Hinckley in the 1981 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan.

The Brady background check is aimed at preventing handgun purchases by felons, people with a history of mental illness or those covered by court-issued restraining orders. President Clinton has sensibly proposed expanding the measure to include anyone convicted of domestic abuse.

In California, which has long had a 15-day waiting period for all firearm purchases, Attorney General Dan Lungren says the requirement blocked the retail sale of more than 4,000 handguns, rifles and shotguns last year - including, astoundingly, 35 sought by convicted murderers. This occurred at a time when gun purchases were plummeting in the state after a sharp spike caused by the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

No one knows how many lives may have been saved in the last two years by blocking the sale of firearms to tens of thousands of felons and mentally unstable people.

Suffice it to say that police chiefs and other law enforcement experts across the country overwhelmingly support the Brady law as a means to curb gun violence, even if its benefits can't be quantified precisely.

To counter the problem of stolen weapons falling into the hands of criminals who have been turned down for retail sales, Assemblyman Richard Katz has introduced a bill making it a felony in California to illegally carry a concealed firearm that is stolen. The measure, which has passed the Assembly, deserves passage as a sensible complement to the Brady law.

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